This post is about my recent experience with the Gut and Psychology Diet, after healing my gut in my 30s.
Two decades ago, I did a diet for a year that changed my gut and my life for the next two decades. I went from being prone to getting sick often and having a reactive stomach with lots of symptoms, to the woman with an iron stomach, who was the last to get sick.
One dedicated year of eating whole foods and zero sugar, turned me into some sort of superhero or “superhealer” as I like to say. Any issues I encountered since then, from mold illness to thyroid antibodies to long COVID, all resolved themselves rather quickly. I still had the resilience to recover all those years later.
A few years after healing my gut I became a health coach to share what I learned. That you have more power to heal your body that you can ever imagine. Even if doctors tell you there’s no hope, or you fail multiple times. That was my story. But I believed there was a way back to balanced and worked to get back there.
Fast forward to my early 50s
So 21 years later, after menopause and life stressors, I knew I could use a reset. No digestive issues this time but my metabolism, energy, brain and mood felt sluggish.
If the medicine of food saved me the first time, it was worth trying again, this time as a health coach. And I could share what I learned.
I picked the Gut and Psychology Diet because it’s one of the most effective and popular diets for sealing the gut lining. A leaky gut is a common root cause of digestive issues, food sensitivities, joint pain, brain fog, fatigue and immune system activation.
Many people with leaky gut don’t have digestive issues but it shows up as autoimmune conditions, migraines, nutritional deficiencies, joint pain, cloudy thinking, irritability, anxiety or depression.
How do you know if you have leaky gut? The Zonulin maker on the GI Map stool test measure it. But if you have intense inflammation which causes joint pain, digestive issues, autoimmunity or food sensitivities, you probably have it. I think most people have some level of gut inflammation or leaky gut these days. It’s just the world we live in.
Save your money for good quality groceries.
How to do GAPS
The Gut and Psychology diet is a bit complicated and super restrictive in early stages. This time my husband joined me to see if it could also clear some of his health issues.
The full GAPs diet (the final version after the 6 stages are completed) was very similar to what I did two decades ago. They both removed grains, most beans, chocolate, caffeine, potatoes, processed foods and refined sugar. But on my original diet, 21 years ago I also eliminated nuts and seeds, aside from pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds are tiny mineral powerhouses and remain my favorite superfood to this day.
The GAPS diet allows honey from the beginning and dried fruit in the final diet. I was not allowed any sweeteners or dried fruit on my previous diet.
The stages of GAPS
What complicates GAPS AND makes it very effective is you go through 6 stages of an ultimate elimination diet, before reaching the full GAPs diet.
The full diet seems very liberal in comparison to stage 1 and 2 of GAPS. The beginning stages makes you feel like you are in food jail. And how fast you move through each stage is different for everyone, depending on the state of your gut and digestive symptoms.
In stage 1 and 2 of GAPS you can only eat soups and stews comprised of meat stock (short cooked broth), low fiber veggies, and animal protein, coconut oil, ghee, egg yolks and honey.
You can’t even drink most herbal teas, other than peppermint, ginger and chamomile. If you tolerate dairy you can homemade 24 hour yogurt and have 1 teaspoon of sauerkraut juice daily.
You need to stay at each stage for 3 days minimum. And we definitely rushed through it. The first 2 stages were oppressively restrictive, and took the fun out of eating. But both of us felt very light on the first stages as the inflammation and inflammatory weight fell off.
Food is emotional
I never realized I had such an emotional relationship with food. It’s a reward and comfort. I was very emotional the initial days on stage 1 and 2 and there was nothing to comfort me. As your gut heals emotions will come up and be released. This is a good thing, but not easy. This diet can be extremely detoxifying.
Facing that much restriction can trigger disordered eating in some people. So you have to know yourself.
The hardest part was the hunger of the initial stages. After eating a lot of protein, fat and veggie-based carbs I should not be hungry. But my body still asked for food.
We rushed through the stages of GAPs because we had to travel on day 15.
We were stayed in an apartment where we could cook, but making broth was not feasible during our 4 day trip. So we stuck to full GAPS foods.
Travel is one of the most disruptive things you can do when healing. I never recommend it. Too much uncertainty for your system (even when it feels like adventure to your brain). The disruption of the routine is always challenging to the nervous system. The body needs a predictable, routine to heal. It reads excitement as stress.
Of course travel threw us off a bit, some of the inflammation came back but we did our best and learned from it.
When we got back home we decided to stay on full GAPs diet to see how we would feel.
Our experience after a month and a week on the GAPS diet
Being on the full GAPs did not feel as good physically as the early stages. The early stages gave our system a rest because the soups and stews were so easy to digest. At each stage you introduce foods slowly and notice what you react to.
Adding in nuts and fruit and raw veggies (salads) made a noticeable difference. not to our digestion, (we didn’t have symptoms to begin with) but to our inflammation.
We both felt more sluggish and inflamed (in comparison) though our diet was super clean. We are going back on the early stages, in a few days, even though I am not looking forward to it. We have a span of time where we are not traveling.
Con of GAPS
The GAPS diet is time consuming. You have to cook a lot because prepared, canned, packages foods are not allowed. You have to make your own nut milk or coconut milk and yogurt. Making yogurt is easier than you think but still work.
Cooking from scratch is always a lot of work.
I couldn’t rely on frozen, gluten-free fish sticks, instant pot risotto or potato pancakes when I didn’t feel like cooking a lot. To make it work you have to be strategic about batch cooking or cook all the time.
I love to cook, but it’s a lot for me. I remind myself I am doing it for a reason, to learn about and protect my health for the next 20 years.
If you are too busy to cook it’s hard to do the GAPS diet. Those who are too busy to cook are often too busy to heal.
But if you have some time (and are organized) it’s manageable.
The first stages are rather easy. Especially if you have an electric pressure cooker. Just throw things in and press a button.
People who do GAPS, sacrifice free time to regain their health. How we investment our time and energy speaks to our life priorities. If you rather spend time with friends/family or rest, then prioritize that.
My advice for GAPS or any diet
The GAPS diet is not a fast fix, but a slow cure. You have to have patience and commitment.
Once you heal your gut lining and balance blood sugar, your body and mind will change.
But don’t do any diet blindly, trusting it over your own body’s feedback.
Two decades ago, I followed the raw food diet for 8 months even though it made everything worse.
I bought into the theories about the benefits of raw enzymes and detox power in raw food. But raw food is hard to digest if you have low stomach acid, like I did.
Not every diet is for every person, so you have to believe in your body’s feedback, not the hype.
You may feel worse at the beginning before feeling better but it won’t last for months.
The pitfalls of Chat GPT
I used Chat GPT to help me figure out what to eat at what stage. It made some glaring mistakes, reminding me that it only spits back what is written online, and there’s lots of bad info online.
And you won’t even know it’s wrong. So be careful.
And try to fit your diet to your stage of life, daily demands, activity and health status. Modify GAPS to your lifestyle.
My husband does long distance bike rides so making sure he can fuel for that is tricky on GAPS. He uses honey water, walnuts and dates during his ride. He also started eating a high protein breakfast for his adrenals.
My concerns about GAPS
What concerns me about the GAPS diet is its lack of starches. No white or sweet potatoes, cassava or plantains. These are healthy starches and your adrenals and thyroid need some starchy carbs.
I ate sweet potatoes on my previous diet and still healed.
It’s easy to not get enough calories or carbs on GAPS. You have to be mindful.
There’s only so much squash, pumpkin, carrots, beets and onions you can eat. Fruit helps too but can spike blood sugar if eaten alone.
Not eating enough or enough carbs, can drop your blood sugar and trigger cortisol. This is stressful for the adrenals.
Meat stock, is a great food for the adrenals and nervous system but must be balanced with enough veggies and minerals. If you crave more salt on this diet there’s a good reason. We added lots of sea salt, potassium, vitamin C and magnesium to help us feel better as we switched from sugar burners to fat burners. Electrolytes and minerals are key here.
I will be monitoring my thyroid hormones on this diet and just sent away my yearly GI Map test. It’s important to keep an eye on things.
And of course, monitor how I feel by tracking it in a notebook.
Sleep, stress and GAPS
I also track my biometrics with my Oura ring which records sleep and daytime stress.
At first I slept much better on the GAPs but then my stress levels rose during the day and sometimes at night. I didn’t feel stressed but my body was probably experiencing low blood sugar.
Histamines
This last week I have felt more sensitive to histamine-containing foods. The GAPS diet can be a high histamine diet.
The meat stock is cooked shorter so it has less histamines, but black tea, tomatoes, avocados, ripe bananas, cashews, egg whites, fermented foods and leftover meat can be high. With histamine you just have to be mindful of not eating too much. After starting to feel foggy and fatigued, I reduced histamine food and felt better.
The first two stage of the diet are very low in histamine. More reason to return to them.
Confession time
While you’re supposed to quit caffeine completely, my husband and I never did. It just felt like too much restriction. I drink matcha and he needs his coffee because he works.
I plan on stopping the caffeine tomorrow, but had to go slow.
So if you have histamine issues, I think the GAPS diet can eventually fix it. I typically don’t have low histamine tolerance, but the stressor of a detoxing gut can cause things to get worse. It’s common to have old symptoms worsen or new ones pop up while healing.
I experienced nausea, loose stools, mild constipation, a bit of bloating. Not my usual. These are signs that things are going according to plan.
